It’s kind of beautiful, really. Like dew strung on a spider’s web or sugar frosting on a birthday cake. Silver tributaries reach out in front of me, each spreading and dividing into the tiniest trickles, glinting as the morning sun catches them obliquely. And then there’s the chiming. Dozens of bells tinkle, off-key but in perfect unison. Beautiful.

At least, it’s beautiful until the rest of my senses catch up. There is glass in my mouth – a gritty nugget sitting right in the middle of my tongue. Ptuh. The cloying smell of milk reaches my nostrils. God knows how many bottles are broken in the back of the float; empty ones trundle past the cab as though determined to continue their journey. Most perverse of all though is the shopping trolley wheel poking through my windscreen, spinning and wobbling drunkenly. The rest of the trolley lies atop the buckled glass like a junkie on a burst couch.

I duck under the window and look up. There they are, the little bastards. One, two, three of them, peering down from the disused railway bridge, their elfin faces caught halfway between horror and delight. How on earth did they manage to get the trolley up there in the first place? Never mind, because I’m stepping out of the van and into the delta of full fat, semi-skimmed, and skimmed milk coursing around the wheels of the float.

This is what they want, of course – a chase. This is what they had in mind when they pushed it off the bridge – another adrenaline rush, another story to tell each other whilst drinking Mad Dog in the park. The sensible thing would be to walk away; to drive on with what’s left of my morning round and my dignity. They aren’t the only ones needing satisfaction now, though. There’s a blood debt to be paid. A milk debt. The faces disappear from the bridge as I start to run towards them.

So you’ve got an idea for a short story. You’ve pre-planned. You’ve researched extensively (?). Surely the next step is to start writing the thing, no?

You are significantly more likely to abandon your piece if you try to convert what are reasonably dry notes into a juicy narrative – sometimes that gap is just too big to bridge. I try to overcome this by free writing planning. I find this quite a liberating experience; I am writing without rules, without grammar, without the hassle of having to structure or pace or preen. If a lightning piece of dialogue comes into my head, down it goes on the page. If I want to write a detailed description of a nineteenth century blackhouse, I can. This is brainstorming – letting my writer’s mind take me where it wants to go. Consequently, there are some real gems formed in this process. Below is my free planning for Meeting Margery Mercer:

Here is an example of stream-of-consciousness writing. I am telling the story as I would to someone sitting next to me on the bus. Planning in this way takes the trepidation out of starting to write in earnest – the story has already been written once. Although the first opportunity to form a narrative curve, I find planning more useful if I stick to a few simple rules.

Limit your time writing. This isn’t the time to focus on grammar, syntax etc. This is where your narrative arc is honed. Does the story work? Could I tell it to a friend on the X95 from Edinburgh to Galashiels? If not, it probably is too dense to work as a short story.

Organise your work into paragraphs. Although seemingly contrary to free writing, this proves useful if I want to move paragraphs around or play with plot later on. It also makes the plan easier to work from when writing your first draft.

Bear in mind that this is your first opportunity to fuse your research and pre-planning. Strategically placed nuggets of research within your plan will add authenticity to your writing, whilst avoiding research overload (a mistake I have made in the past). Less is more here. The aim is not to prove that you know your subject matter inside-out, but to entertain. If your plan is groaning with the weight of statistics and historical anecdotes, then your full-length draft certainly will be.

Once your scaffolding is complete, congratulations – you have a narrative in front of you! Next is the hard part – writing it properly and writing it better.

The vast majority of authors fit their craft around jobs, family, homemaking, and other commitments. Anyone who expects to write in blissful solitude at a sprawling desk with coffee steam curling into the ceiling fan above them will be swiftly disabused of such fantasies. A more common tableau is stealing half an hour at the end of a stressful day to write on the sofa with Peppa Pig ringing in my ears and my three-year-old’s legs entangled in the laptop cable. Most of the time it’s not a glamorous hobby. Most of the time it’s a grind.

No matter how many times you remind yourself that rejections are part of the game, that it’s not personal, that even Hemingway’s writing was initially dismissed, it still hurts. It should hurt; you’ve invested time, effort, and passion in your work. All of which makes it important to celebrate when things do go right.

In the last month I’ve been lucky enough to have short stories accepted in Soft Cartel, Penny Shorts, and Shooter magazine. Two of these are paying magazines, which makes it all the sweeter! Doubtless I’ll have barren spells again. Those rejection slips and oh-so-close emails will disappoint time and time again, but it’s important to remember the successes.

my latest short story has been picked up by the fine folks at Penny Shorts – quite the honour! Unlike most short story websites, Penny Shorts pay authors for their work whilst keeping content free for readers – a trait worth encouraging, don’t you agree?

It creeps away from you, the tide. You can watch it for hours, a serene lead grey, but turn for a minute to look at the darkling room behind you and it has cringed away, eager to avoid watching eyes.

Bore tides, neap tides, rip tides, brown tides, semidiurnal tides. I can watch them all from my boathouse, glass of red in my hand and the gas heater humming away at my side. The cold is starting to edge in from across the bay.

It was a spring tide that brought about my undoing. Out beyond the pier the tide went, out beyond the rockpools, out past the moored sailboats. It had been a dog walker who found her; it’s always the dog walkers, isn’t it? There had been phone calls, more dog walkers, fishermen, and finally the police with their bright jackets and crime scene tape. There had also been the first knock on the door. No, I didn’t know who it might be. No, I hadn’t seen anything suspicious.

They’ll be back of course, once the DNA tests results are in, once the facial reconstruction posters are pinned upon lampposts in the village. For now, though, it is just police tape guttering in the sea breeze and men in white masks digging before the tide turns again. I sit back in the rattan chair before pouring myself another glass.

***As always, delighted to hear any feedback! The featured image is a beautiful boathouse on Loch Tay, Scotland***